Sponsored Game Review: Wordspionage

Description: A word game that shares many similarities with the world famous Scrabble game, Wordspionage features many of the things you wish you could do when playing with friends, but simply can’t. It’s sort of like playing Scrabble with danger turned on, and it’s wicked cool. Wordspionage is first and foremost about scoring the highest amount of points, but you can spy on your opponents’ tiles, switch tiles with your opponent, disable their multipliers and more. Frankly, this is the sort of Scrabble that would get anyone interested in board games again. With online multiplayer featuring push notifications and more, there’s a lot to love about Wordspionage. Take a look at the trailer below to see more.

How it Works: There’s a free version of the game that you can download from the Play Store, that has all the features unlocked, but includes ads. If you don’t like ads you can always purchase the ad-free version. Once you’ve got the game installed, you’ll need to either sign-in with your Facebook account or create an account. I opted to create my own Wordspionage account, which is quick and painless.

Once you’ve set up an account, you can start a game up. There are a handful of options to choose from here, and range from the amount of time someone has to take their turn, to how many guesses at a none-dictionary word players can have. You should pay close attention to these as they will determine how your game feels and how long a game will potentially last for.

The below gameplay demo will show you how to play the game, but essentially it plays a lot like Scrabble when you first start a game. From there, things can get a little bit more heated, of course.

The aim of the game is to place words on the board and score as many points as possible, just as it is with Scrabble.

However, obtaining gadgets from the Spec Ops wheel can give you special spy capabilities which quickly liven up the game, and add a fair amount of danger for both players.

These abilities allow for such sneaky activities like spying on your opponent’s tiles. You can also steal tiles, shuffle multipliers and even steal points.

There are certain words that are dubbed “Mission Words”, these are words you must play on the board in order to spin the bonus wheel.

Opinion: Wordspionage is an excellent fresh take on the formula that everyone finds so appealing in Scrabble. It’s a great game that offers a lot of added features, and to say that this is developed by a very small and honest developer there’s a high level of polish here. The graphics could look better on tablets, but there’s not too much to complain about there, and it all does add to the espionage theme that’s so appealing throughout. As a Writer, you would imagine I like these types of games, and you’d be right. However, it’s not the word play that makes Wordspionage so appealing to me, it’s more to do with the Spy vs Spy attitude, the ability to spy on the opponent’s tiles is particularly fun. I like to plan ahead, and so I don’t like surprises, which means using the spying ability I can predict where they might next strike and then plan accordingly. These power-ups are great fun, and even allow you to wipe out that lucky triple-word score your opponent used to take the lead in the last turn. Wordspionage really allows players to show off their strengths and their individual playing style, something that the original Scrabble app (which is an absolute joke as it stands) doesn’t do at all.

Ratings

Speed (4/5) – The app runs well, and you can control the pacing of the game with how quickly you want the opponent to take their turn and more. Essentially creating a pace to suit you.

Features (5/5) – The official Scrabble app is a mess, thankfully Wordspionage builds on the great game and creates something fantastic. With cool power-ups and such, this is a new take on a great game that should appeal to everyone.

Theme (4/5) – We can see why the look here won’t be for everyone, but on the whole the theme and attitude of the game is very cool indeed.

Overall (4.5/5) – An excellent game that only really lacks in its looks on tablets, Wordspionage is welcome break from the monotony of other, similar games and at the same time offers something completely new.

Pros

Easy to get started with, no complicated rules.

Spy abilities like looking at other’s tiles, destroying multipliers and more make for a unique experience.

Theme and attitude of the game is a cool celebration of funny cliches surrounding spies.

Free to play, with only minor ads to deal with – a much more satisfying arrangement than even the official Scrabble app.

Cons

Could look better on tablets.

Interactive tutorial in-game to explain power-ups and abilities would work really well here, however this is said to be coming soon.

Conclusion: There’s really not much to complain here, Wordspionage is a fun game that builds on an already very good game to make something more modern, more approachable and just down right cool. I’m a big Scrabble fan and I love to get my deluxe set out with friends and play a game or two. However, when it comes to Android games, the options concerning Scrabble are even more boring than playing with inferior players in real life, they’re bland and offer no real excitement. Wordspionage however, is a breath of fresh air with bags of charm and excellent new features to teach an old dog some very appealing new tricks.